The Curiosity Index (18.02.2019)

As I know most of the guys Andrew Wilson is talking about here, I can confirm it’s a pretty good description and a very helpful description. Something I aspire to.

What is the most attractive quality in a leader? No doubt there are all sorts of ways of answering that, and although some responses are obviously wrong, I don’t think there’s any particular one that is obviously right (other than “Christlikeness” or “love”, which just push the question back a stage: “OK, so what does that look like?”). For years I’ve oscillated between “prayerfulness” and “humility” (which, when you think about it, are two sides of the same coin), with “zeal” and “wisdom” also up there. But more recently I’ve thought about it in a slightly different way, based on the beautiful image in C. S. Lewis’s The Last Battle. The most attractive quality in a leader, I find, is when you discover that the inside is bigger than the outside.

For me Jeremy is the most thoughtful commenter on environmental issues in the UK. He avoids stridency but doesn’t lack utter commitment to the cause. Here he reflects on the spread of the climate strike.

There’s something very powerful about children and teenagers taking political action in this way. It forces the debate onto the agenda because it overturns social conventions and raises difficult questions. There are the practical considerations for parents, teachers and headteachers as they work out if and how to support the action. Then there’s the symbolic value of children protesting against adult inaction – a failure in the basic duty of care.

It’s worth clicking on the title link to see the other videos that help you realise that light is really fast but the universe is so vast that it makes the fastest thing we know feel like an out of breath, arthritic, sloth on a sleepy day.